ARTICLES ABOUT ULSTER VOLUNTEER FORCE BY DATE - PAGE 2

American mediator George Mitchell concentrated Thursday on the potentially pivotal role that Northern Ireland's pro-British paramilitary groups could play in reviving a 1998 peace agreement. After a week's break, the former U.S. senator from Maine returned to the British government's Belfast headquarters for the fourth week of his mission to try to save the Good Friday 1998 accord. The pro-British paramilitary groups--the Ulster Defense Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force--are blamed for killing more than 800 people, mostly Catholic civilians, before they called a 1994 cease-fire.

Pro-British guerrillas said Thursday that they were not ready to hand in their arms, dimming hopes of an early end to paralysis in Northern Ireland's fragile peace process. But, challenging their Irish Republican Army foes to create conditions for all-round disarmament, the Protestant militias said scrapping weaponry was "an honorable objective." The fiercely pro-British Ulster Volunteer Force and the Red Hand Commando, which have consistently spurned demands to hand in arms, issued their statement ahead of a major review of the struggling Good Friday peace accord due next month.

More than four-fifths of people questioned want paramilitary rebels to disarm immediately in support of last year's peace accord, an opinion poll indicates. The survey, published Monday in the Belfast Telegraph newspaper, provides fresh ammunition for politicians arguing about how to form a new Protestant-Catholic government for the British-ruled province. Protestants are refusing to govern Ulster alongside the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party unless the Irish Republican Army first begins destroying its weapons stockpiles.

Three Roman Catholics and three Protestants won early release from prison Friday in Northern Ireland, the first of about 250 paramilitary prisoners whose terms will be cut short before Christmas. Under terms of the April 10 peace agreement, about 400 prisoners are supposed to be freed within two years of that date, but authorities have indicated most, if not all, will be out of prison well before then. Those released Friday were three members of the Irish Republican Army and three members of the Ulster Defense Association, both outlawed groups.

The stereotypical view of Northern Ireland is that Protestants form the prosperous middle and upper classes while Catholics find it harder to get jobs and are mostly at the bottom of the economic scale. There is some validity in that, but Alan Curry, 45, and his wife, Samantha, are Protestants who have never known anything but poverty. They live in the lower-middle-class Tullyally public-housing complex outside Londonderry, and Curry noted that, among 1,000 political units in Northern Ireland, it ranks 90th from the bottom in an assessment of deprived areas.

A small bomb exploded Saturday beneath the driver's seat of a car near Belfast, killing the Protestant driver and engulfing the vehicle in flames. The bomb went off as Glen Greer, 28, drove away from his home in Bangor, 15 miles east of Belfast, making him the first person to die in a political killing in Northern Ireland in three months. Greer, who crawled from the burning vehicle but died in a hospital, might have been targeted in a feud involving one or more of Northern Ireland's four pro-British Protestant paramilitary groups.

The Irish Republican Army has sent three teams of gunmen to Britain to target top politicians before the May 1 election, according to the Sunday Times newspaper. Citing security sources, the paper said intelligence officers have warned senior Conservative Party members of Parliament, former Northern Ireland ministers and associates of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Early Monday, London police closed parts of Heathrow airport and five railway stations during morning rush hour after receiving what they termed "threatening phone calls."

The sweet sounds you hear coming from Northern Ireland nowadays are those of guns falling silent, grenades being stowed, bombs getting shelved. This time the one laying down their weapons are the main unionist paramilitaries, whose umbrella organization said Thursday that, like the Irish Republican Army, they would "universally cease all operational hostilities." The ensuing expressions of delight-"this is a wonderful moment, a tremendous and exciting opportunity," said Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds-testify to the exhilarating impact of an idea whose time has arrived: Abandon violence and negotiate an end to the long and bloody dispute over the future status of Northern Ireland, or Ulster.

A bomb exploded on a train as it pulled into a Dublin station Monday, the first attack in Ireland since the IRA declared a cease-fire two weeks ago. Protestant militants claimed responsibility for the blast, which slightly injured two passengers. The Ulster Volunteer Force, in a message to Ulster Television in Belfast, said it had hidden bombs at seven sites throughout Dublin, including the international airport. Police snarled traffic as they rushed to the sites, including city hall, the central post office, the Customs House and another Dublin train station, but found nothing.

Protestant paramilitary groups have gradually replaced the Irish Republican Army as the prime killers in the 25-year-old sectarian guerrilla war in this Protestant-dominated British province. British statistics, which are not challenged by Protestant loyalist forces or the Roman Catholic republican paramilitary organizations, show that since late 1991 the Protestants of the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Ulster Volunteer Force have been killing more people in the war, which has left 3,155 dead since 1969.